Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making

We collect monthly data from a representative sample of US households on usage of and attitudes toward artificial intelligence. We are developing questions on people’s experiences toward artificial intelligence.

We collect monthly data from a representative sample of US households on usage of and positive and negative experiences with specific social media platforms. Our hope is that this information can help stakeholders reward platforms that meaningfully connect and inform users, while holding accountable platforms that create negative experiences for users and society.

We collect monthly data from a representative sample of US households to measure increasing usage of and experiences with mixed reality technology, including augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications. Our focus extends to understanding how the growing usage of these technologies impact daily life, productivity, and overall well-being. Through this index, we aim to shed light on the potential benefits and challenges associated with mixed reality, providing insights that can guide developers, policymakers, and consumers in making informed decisions about the adoption and regulation of these emerging technologies.

The Neely Center is proud to co-chair the Council on Technology and Social Cohesion. The Council facilitates networking and collaboration between tech sector leaders and peace builders to explore ideas on how to design and deploy technology for social cohesion. The Council’s efforts go beyond responding to digital harms; to address their cause, interventions must shift toward proactive, design-focused solutions, toward technology which builds social cohesion. The Council aims for this technology to be desired, accessible and affordable. Learn more about the Council here.

We work to advance the science of the design of social media systems to provide an avenue for policy makers, technologists, and citizens to improve the impact of social media platforms on society. We do continual work with the press, policy makers, academics, and technologists on advancing this argument.

On November 3-4, 2023, the Neely Center hosted the Psychology of Technology Institute’s 7th annual New Directions in Research conference. The conference theme this year was “The Psychology of AI Value Alignment”. We are thrilled to share that the event brought together over 130 participants from across the world and featured over 20 presentations covering the latest research on topics such as “Using Large Language Models to Help People be Their ‘Best’ Selves”, “Integrating AI and Democracy”, “Can Gen AI Help End HIV?”, and “When and Why Do Chatbots Satisfy the Human Need for Social Connection?”. Executives from Ernst & Young, Khan Academy, Healthvana, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, United Nations, Common Sense Media, Pinterest, and theAmerican Psychological Association discussed the various ways AI could be implemented to improve technology’s impact on society.

“There was terrific energy from start to finish,” said Nathanael Fast, executive director of the Neely Center. “Over the years, we’ve found that technologists and behavioral scientists are eager to learn from each other, and when these kinds of cross-disciplinary conversations happen early in the design process we can ultimately build better and safer products.”

Fast co-organized the conference with Ravi Iyer, managing director of the Neely Center, and Juliana Schroeder, Harold Furst Chair in Management Philosophy and Value at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

The Neely Center and the Initiative on Digital Competition gathered leading minds from industry and academia to discuss what’s now and what’s next in responsible AI.

On March 11, 2024, the Neely Center, in collaboration with the Council on Technology and Social Cohesion, hosted the Design Solutions Summit 2024 in Washington DC. This event brought together a select group of thought leaders and innovators at the forefront of technology and democracy, focusing on the critical role of design in enhancing online civic discourse. The event was kicked off by a speech from Kathy Boockvar, former Secretary of State of Pennsylvania, who discussed the effect that online discourse can have on elections and included talks by numerous technologists with experience at Google, Facebook, and Instagram, as to potential design-based solutions. Among the participants in the workshop were representatives from Meta, Twitter, Google, USC, Notre Dame, Build Up, Search for Common Ground, Villanova University, the Prosocial Design Network, the National Democratic Institute, Stanford, Reset.Tech, Aspen Institute, the US State Department, Knight Georgetown, the Department of Homeland Security, the American Psychological Association, Athena Strategies, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, Protect Democracy, and India Civil Watch International. The event was co-sponsored by the Council of Technology and Social Cohesion and hosted at Search for Common Ground headquarters. Several participants leveraged the Neely Center's design code and election recommendations in their remarks. The convening was productive and resonated with the participants for its relevance. As one attendee noted, “For someone working in the responsible tech field, the summit was an incredible opportunity to learn not just about new design solutions but. almost more importantly, where the field is converging on which design solutions are most powerful.”

Links:

For Neely Center's design code and election recommendations

For Council on Tech and Social Cohesion

For Search for Common Ground

The HumanTech Summit is an international scientific conference organized by the HumanTech Center at SWPS University. The Summit aims to connect people from different spheres of life and highlight the fact that neither technology without humans nor humans without technology can accomplish as much individually as they can when working together. The Neely Center is excited to support the HumanTech Summit 2023, which took place in Poland from December 9 - 10, 2023. Learn more about the Summit here.

Organized by How to Build Up Inc., the Build Peace Conference aims to explore emergent challenges to peace in the digital era and introduces peacebuilding innovations to address these issues. The conference serves as an interdisciplinary forum for addressing critical topics and transformative practices in peace, conflict, and innovation. The USC Marshall Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making is pleased to serve as a sponsor of the Build Peace 2023 conference, which took place in Kenya from December 1 - 3, 2023. On Day 1 of the conference, the Neely Center host a workshop on “Risks and Benefits of AI for a Global Community”. Learn more about Build Peace here.